Sumimasen...a little bit o' reference to sex in here... Not meant to flare your hormones: I'm all about naturalism folks. It happens; people think of this stuff, worse than what's written here too. Maybe it helps that I think of sex maturely? As in, it's meant to make babies and bond two in marriage? Yeah. Base reasons cure all worries. Usually. Anyways, this is NOT smut...if you want to preserve your good thoughts as you have them for now, I don't blame you. I am all about preserving the sanctity of your brains. However, it's really not bad, and not what the chapter is about. It's only about a paragraph's worth. Just wanting to warn you...
Thanks to all my reviewers, and people who fav'd me and/or the story, and put it on alert! That's very kind of you. BUT YOU HAVE BAD TASTE. My writing is bleh, it needs work. And effort. HAHA! Arigatou!
For a reviewer, Epiphany---
Thanks so much for your medical input, as professional or amateur as it may be. xDDD No offence by that, I just don't know if you study for fun, or if you are really of medical profession! I must say that's what I kinda of figured in my head, about the injuries (not all the technical terms…)…. And really no offence. I just can't trust folks in the world or on the Web anymore, nope….anyway! I really do appreciate it though, and when I first started thinking about the story, I wondered if I should go with a more "true to humanity" approach, considering injury and such (as you've described), or if I should just let it flow to get the fantasy story across. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to go with a realistic injury….as in, I'm going to "make up" the consequences of Sanji's injury. If it's not accurate, I'm not going to bother, ONLY on the basis that in the manga/anime of One Piece, there are SEVERAL things wrong with all the brutality that the characters go through (for example, Sanji getting his head slammed by Pearl at Baratie). It's not that I don't care about how things would really play out, I just don't think I could work well with it being more realistic (Sanji's injury). Let me tell you….I usually consult the manga and One Piece drawings to make sure I have directions and room organization/placement right. This is one time I'm not going to bother. XDDDDD
But I might write another version….with more realistic injuries….that might work out later….
But thanks again! I appreciate someone else looking into the TRUTH of the matter; sometimes it only feels like I do that. HAHA!
To everyone else: the medical stuff in here I realize is unrealistic. Please disregard that. I'm not bothering at the moment with the technical stuff….I might write something else later with realistic injury. Also disregard the fact that I'm sticking with Oda-ness. They are not very realistic in general, Oda's pirates. In the following chapter, Nami seems as a lenient navigator (as she is really in the manga/anime). I would assume the navigator of a pirate ship would constantly be on alert concerning coordinates, weather changes, etc. It's a tough job, and none of these pirates really are true to the REAL jobs on sea….so don't flame me for being unrealistic. That's just Oda!
Leading the mission trip to Mars,
Ken
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CHAPTER 3: "MAKE ME GOD, PLEASE."
Nami woke up early to a ringing alarm clock, as she usually did, starting off the day by checking the coordinates of the ship and making sure that they were still on course. After assessing the progress of their journey, she would usually lay back down for an hour or two, depending on how early the captain decided to start bothering the rest of the crew. Gazing into a newly settled fog, she sighed in disbelief as her memories from the previous night had all resettled into reality, quite unlike the disarrayed dreams she had experienced during sleep. That explained the uncharacteristic silence of the kitchen, its windows dark and covered in dew, no scent of breakfast wafting through a typical morning ocean mist. The sky was gray and overcast, threatening to rain. After she carefully replaced her compass into her jacket pocket, the door to the men's cabin lifted, the little reindeer poking his head through the opening.
"I was just coming to get you," Chopper said, catching sight of the tired navigator.
The room no longer felt oppressive and full of tension, but Nami still felt a sense of foreboding as the skin on her arms prickled. Chopper gently pushed a hoof against Sanji's back, turned to the room as he lay motionless on the cot. The sleeping chef shifted slightly and moaned, from pain or (if he hadn't been hurt, Nami thought, from some lecherous dream) from merely being woken from sleep, Nami couldn't tell. The doctor checked his temperature and turned his head towards Nami. He frowned and sighed.
"Well, his readings on all of this stuff," he motioned to the medical instruments, "blood pressure, temperature, are all fine."
Nami nodded, still expecting worse news by the look on the reindeer's face.
"However, he still hasn't woken up completely and showed me that he is fully conscious of what's going on around him."
"Is he in a coma?" Nami asked, not knowing how to judge Sanji's symptoms.
"I wondered last night, he wasn't responding to any stimuli, but he's at least noticing that I'm poking and prodding him this morning." Chopper patted Sanji on the shoulder. "I fear for the worst though."
Nami looked at the reindeer in confusion. "And what makes you say that?"
"You can't get your head smashed by a crate full of fruit like that and expect no damage. I had trouble lifting the crate myself (and that's not in my present form); I went to the kitchen to look at how it all happened, where it fell from, and Zolo told me what he saw. I'm surprised he even lifted that thing to the top of the pantry!"
Nami silently disagreed. She wasn't surprised at all. Sanji was strangely strong, especially for his build. He looked thin, even emaciated in some of his outfits and his stances; his bent figure at the kitchen counter, chopping onions, or peppers, or some other ingredient, his hair falling forward into his face, reminded her of a leaning sickly willow tree near a creek she had once played at in her youth. She was often amazed at how the thin tree never fell over into the water, similarly at how Sanji continued to amaze her with his Herculean strength, with his skilled kicks and strong hands, forcefully holding off the occasional enemy or even the hungry captain. She liked his hands. She had once allowed him to locate and massage a sore muscle on her back, giving in to his pleading request, and had trouble suppressing several unsuspected moans of complete ecstasy as the chef skillfully kneaded her muscles, somehow knowing exactly where to press his fingers and how much force to apply. Of course, the whole event was unfortunately short-lived when Sanji unceremoniously tried working his way under her arms and to her front, ending with a disgruntled navigator and a chef with a black eye, but Nami found herself continuing to admire his precision and direction of strength, from beating off nuisances to delicately cracking an egg with one hand. Even if he sported a black eye.
She sighed.
"Well, it isn't anything to get upset over," Chopper said, glancing thoughtfully at the navigator. "I'll be taking good care of him."
"I know, it's just that---"
A loud gasp came from the once silent chef on the cot, who now was squirming and trying to roll over on his back. He seemed to be strangely struggling; it should have been easy to gather enough force in his muscles to push himself from laying on his side to on his back, but he couldn't do it. The small doctor ran to over to him, his hooves clattering against the wooden floor.
"What in the world is wrong with you..." Chopper whispered as he helped him onto his back. Nami kneeled down next to the cot as Sanji continued squirming, even when Nami held his hand. "I don't know what's wrong."
"He's---"
Nami was cut short by a loud, piercing cry from Sanji. He shook a little, Nami thought from seizure convulsions, but after recovering from the shock of his own yell, he opened his mouth and cried again. She had never seen the chef look so ruined and sad. He was actually crying and shaking, for whatever reason. His bottom lip jutted out slightly as he started whimpering softly, preparing to shout once more.
"This isn't normal, Chopper..." Nami said softly as she brushed the hair from Sanij's face. The reindeer nodded fiercely, trying to gently shake the chef to some sort of understanding.
"I just don't get it. I need to do some brain tests on him. Nothing else shows anything, and he keeps having spasms, and now this crying."
Nami gently ran the back of her hand and fingers along Sanji's face.
"Shh, it's okay, Sanji, please don't cry..." It was as if she was talking to a child, or a baby. She uncharacteristically (even she noticed) felt like holding him in her arms and lulling him to sleep as if from a motherly instinct, but quickly corrected her thinking by looking along the cot, observing his obviously adult body. He was no baby. But he reminded her of one.
"You need to get him to sleep, Nami. Do anything. I need to set this equipment up."
"But I don't know what to do!"
"He's being a baby, so treat him like one!" The reindeer clodded up the mast-ladder and through the ceiling door to the deck. He hid his equipment in the storage room; no way in Hell was he storing it in the men's quarters. Too many eager hands and prying eyes.
Before she knew exactly what she was doing, Nami struggled to pull Sanji towards her until she could comfortably have his head lay in her lap. She bent over him slightly, stroking his bruised, red, tear-stained cheeks with her fingers.
"Sanji, Sanji, shh, it's alright, it's okay, don't cry anymore."
She would have never done such a thing in regular circumstances, and at first she felt awkward, his head facing up in her lap and his mouth pouting slightly. But as Sanji slowly drifted back to sleep to the rhythmic motion of her fingers alongside his face, she became calmed and relieved. She was closely eyeing one of the small white buttons on the blue oxford he was wearing, first rising and falling rapidly with his scattered breaths, then gently moving in sync with his slowed breathing. She smiled, wondering if Belle-Mere did the same to her when she cried as a baby. What a grand feeling. She hated people whining, complaining, but the thought of Belle-Mere taking two grubby, unknown children into her life, caring for them…it was strangely beautiful.
Nami suddenly had the grand idea of having children of her own. She wondered at the want to care for children she herself had protected and nourished while growing in the womb, smiling at the thought of what it would feel like to rub the round smooth belly of a baby bubbling spit at the mouth, just after a bath, smelling of some sort of lavender or other flowery scent. She felt stupid for thinking, but continued to let her mind wander. She imagined little orange haired girls and boys bouncing around in the house she grew up in---the only house she had lived in enough to appreciate---running through the tangerine groves back at Coco Village, picking ones ripe and not yet ripe, scolding them for it, then laughing.
But no bit of imagination had yet produced a figment of a husband, her complementary male figure. It seemed foreign for her, she hadn't really grown up around a male to use as a role model, save Genzo. But he was mostly for disciplinary purposes, not really like a father. And Arlong qualified for none of it. When it occurred to her, her thoughts raced on their own to produce children spontaneously running from the dreamlike house with blonde hair and curly eye brows, changing to green hair or long noses or rubber-like features before she could concentrate on any of the children especially. She laughed outwardly; she didn't have to marry one of those brutes on the ship. But they had been the only males around her for a long period of time, so it was all she'd known. Then the children ran through her head again, along the sand of the beach, wondering at the ocean and its limits, up and down, left and right, forward and back to north, south, east, and west. Each had blonde or orange hair, and they all ran to her laughing and questioning, big eyes and small fat hands.
"We want to know how it got to be so big!"
"Is it like peoples? It grows?"
Nami laughed and dreamily replied, "'People', honey."
"Where does it end, huh?"
Dream-Nami opened her mouth to reply as a lean yet strong arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her close. "It never ends, Nami...like my love for you." Uncontrolled, the beach switched instantly to a dimly lit bedroom, a soft bed underneath her back, and someone over her, straddling her forcefully between their knees as they crushed her beneath their weight. She found herself struggling for breath, the feeling almost realistic, although she was still daydreaming. But it felt good to struggle, to have an almost 'good' pain being put on her. The other person's hands quickly wandered over her stomach and along her sides, underneath her shirt, pleading to travel farther up north, as Nami looked up, still out of breath, into the face of---
"Oh Nami-schwaaaaaaaaan... oh mell---or---ine, you're absolutely worn out and practically defenseless, I'm so sorry...heh heh heh. Not. No other words for it except absolutely amazing...but if you aren't pregnant after that then---"
"OH GOD, STOP TALKING, SANJI." Nami yelled out, shaking her head violently to get the thoughts out of her head and back into reality. She sat there solidly, her hands on her head holding chunks of taut orange hair, her eyes fixed on the wall across from her, her scalp tense and nerves vibrating underneath her skin.
'You're a fool, Nami…'
How had she managed to continue through so many scenes so quickly? Those aren't my thoughts, she kept telling herself. Not my thoughts...not with him, oh no, not with him... She looked down at the now sound-asleep form of Sanji, his head gently resting in her lap. She sneered.
"Jerk, getting into my daydreaming now...I would NEVER marry him, and would NEVER do that with the creep...not with him, not with ANYBODY..." She scowled at herself for allowing her mind to wander into that sort of territory without her say so: she had other work to do, and having babies required sex, which required marriage, which required commitment and love and everything else she couldn't trust or deal with. It was human, and common, she knew.
"But I can't afford to risk things...my work is already cut out for me, by me."
She pushed Sanji back onto the cot, not being any too careful to try and keep him from waking up. Brushing herself off, she ascended to the deck.